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I've never watched Friendship is magic because I hate anything the trollbase likes. Without question. Does that make me a sore loser? I never grew up on My little pony, just other shit like captain caveman and batman.

Before I take a shot at that question, what was your opinion of:
1) Tiny Toons
2) Animaniacs
3) Batman: the animated series
4) Pinky & the Brain
5) Freakazoid
6) Power Puff Girls
?

All are "children's animated series"... and I believe Mr. Terrorist's video link demonstrates what a bizarre crack-dusted piece of cartoon it can be at times.

I think a lot of people comparing MLP to old children cartoons are missing one major point,

Apart from a few of the older members on this site, most people currently in their 20s and early 30s WERE children when these cartoons started airing, so of course we liked them back then, for example,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solafighter

Power Puff Girls are cool. Liked it as a child.

Right there. Of course we have fond memories of them now - we watched them while we were kids. Let me give you some evidence to prove my point.

How many of you watch and enjoy MODERN kids cartoons to the same extent? An example, Ben10. How many people here above the age of 20 watch that?

My point is, people in their 20s and 30s are discovering MLP for the first time, as when they were kids it may have just been something their sisters were into, or not at all. The fact full grown men are discovering this child's cartoon (and I should also enphasise the difference that it is a cartoon for young girls, not even boys at all). It's a very unique case - though I am personally against it, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it most certainly isn't right to compare it to ANYTHING else we've seen. Not Pixar, not disney, no.

The only point I can somewhat agree with is that it is the moe culture arriving in the West in a very strange manner of creature. Or should I say pony?

I just watched 4 episodes of My Little Pony. It's not Shakespeare or anything, but it's a lot better then I thought. I mightn't go out of the way to watch it, but I'd certainly enjoy watching it with a daughter if I had one. I'd say as children's TV goes, it's very good. Especially when you compare it to other girl's fare.

Despite being based on a line of toys it doesn't really feel commercial at all. Unlike, say, Transformers it doesn't feel flagrantly toyetic, or even overly girly. It's just about (as it's title says) friendship. In that sense I think the series deals with it fairly well, and it gives a wide range of feminine personalities for girls to identify with, who are all fairly fleshed out with their own qualities and foibles.

It's fairly simplistic in it's storytelling, but that's to be expected from children's television, but artistically it's fairly good, with some interesting artwork tossed in here and there.

Further to that, I think it really puts itself on the level with little girls, doesn't act all paternalistic or anything. It can compete with any show aimed at boys, which is pretty good. In that sense it's filling a gap that shojo often fills in Japan. It's not of the same quality as something like Cardcaptor Sakura, but when you compare it to a lot of the dreck aimed at girls (just watch some ads...), it's positively fantastic.

And it is actually watchable if you're not a little girl. It's pretty funny some of the horse based names they come up with. "Equestria", "Canterlot".

It's not an amazing show or anything, but it's far from being bad. I think there needs to be more shows like it.

EDIT: I'd say there is actually something similiar behind male fandom for MYP and male fandom for Shojo. Just as a lot of Girls find fiction and TV aimed squarely at boys to be appealing, I don't see why the reverse shouldn't apply either. I think the issue has been that the vehicle was never there, TV and fiction aimed at girls has never been of a high enough quality, due to not achieving adequate attention or funding, or actually being made with serious effort. Not only that, but you also need to have certain elements down to have the proper crossover appeal. In this case, the use of good humour and a spirit of adventure. Likewise, male oriented work might need sufficient focus on human relationships to get wide appeal among women, EG the way Gundam appeals to girls with it's male rivalries/bonding. But something that's totally based on destruction and cool gizmos, say Transformers, might leave girls out in the cold.

In this case the right elements were not previously there to generate the crossover appeal. You could argue for Powerpuff Girls, but I'd argue that that show was actually more aimed at boys, even if the main characters were girls.

In a similiar way, actually, Magical girl shows served as the vehicle for otaku into Shojo fandom, because the adventurous and action elements were there to bring male viewers in. It's a similiar situation with MYP. MYP is funny, but in a novel feminine way. And I think that appeals to a lot of guys looking for something different.

Really though, I'd like to see more effort and creativity being put into things that have traditionally labelled as "for girls". Not only that, but I'd like to see women actually being at the heads of such efforts. Too much of the entertainment industry is dominated by men. Even in genres that traditionally aimed at women (like chick flicks and romcoms), 9 times out of 10 the writers and directors are still guys. And usually they don't care about what they're producing, they're doing it for the cash, or to earn brownie points to get into more "prestigious" film making. I think that kind of cynical attitude is prevalent when it comes to women's fiction, and I think it really holds things back. One of the unusual things about MYP is that if you read through the credits of the show, there's a lot of women there, in fact I'd say among the writers, directors and producers it's 80% female. I think that brings something different to the table. If you compare that to, say, the Powerpuff Girls, that was only 10% female on it's writing/director staff. I think we have a case here of a show being written by women, for girls and I think that's, despite how obvious it is, a rare thing.

Well there was Justice League. I didn't get into that until much later, like last year (probably because it was on a channel I didn't get at that time, so I didn't know it existed).

There was also Sailor Moon, but that was because of the Abridged Series (and I've only actually watched the Japanese language episodes) I didn't get into Dragon Ball Z or Yugioh via their Abridged series, nor do I think I've gotten into any series via their abridged versions....except Sailor Moon. Probably because it was cancelled for a time and I wanted to see if I could figure out what they'd use for jokes based on the actual product (which I didn't actually do, since I didn't watch the English language version).

I think a lot of people comparing MLP to old children cartoons are missing one major point,

Apart from a few of the older members on this site, most people currently in their 20s and early 30s WERE children when these cartoons started airing, so of course we liked them back then, for example,

Right there. Of course we have fond memories of them now - we watched them while we were kids. Let me give you some evidence to prove my point.

You should probably talk to the huge ADULT fan clubs of those 90s series (TT, A!, F!, P&tB, etc) back then before guessing that no adults watched cartoons in the 90s or that the writers were sneaking around the "children's wall" to give the adults something to enjoy.

If you go to a popular general animation forum, like Toonzone, you would see that most of the forum members commenting on the general news/episode discussions for Adventure Time, The Magical World of Gumball, and yes, Ben 10 as well and the like are well above the intended demographic of those shows. It's that way for MLP as well. So no, I don't find adults watching these shows regularly unbelievable at all.

My parents barely paid attention to the cartoons I watched growing up (unless it happened to be Bullwinkle or Looney Toons...or a holiday special of some sort) with prossible exception of Inspector Gadget (I think it was the Get Smart vibe).

That changed in the 90s. Instead of the, at the time, PSA message based or toy based cartoons, suddenly things had shifted back to either comedy (Tiny Toons/Animaniacs) or serious superheroes (Batman, Superman, X-men, and Spiderman) rather than the Super Friends reruns from when I was really little. Suddenly the writers started to be able to get away with things again. People died (every once in a while). Conflicts might still be black hats and white hats, but sometimes you had a harder time deciding if the black hats were all that bad...or if the white hats were justified in what they were doing. You sometimes questioned what the X-men did. Spiderman was always questioning himself. Batman was in a dark style like the Tim Burton films. Superman wasn't, but then, he's Superman, and he eventually blending into the Batman style shows via crossovers (and the later Justice League). You got some genuinely sympathetic villians from time to time. You also got some actually dangerous villains rather that the usually rash of cheese cartoon villains people were use to by 1990. These shows got stuff past the censors. Harley Quinn for instance was able to say some rather colorful innuendos. And she and Catwoman (along with several other characters) could get away with, suggestive behavior, from time to time. Not to the level of the more recent cartoon version of Catwoman who was able to do half a strip tease on screen.

Comedy also started getting stuff past the censors again (how often would you hear the word "anal" before 1993 in an American cartoon on network television?). They started referencing older programming that a child would definately not have gotten unless through their parents (the Marx Brothers for instance as well as other 30s - 60s film and later television). There wasn't a general moral responsibilty message for the show (though in Animaniacs they mocked the moral message segments for a while with their "Wheel of Morality" bits.) They still did "educational" bits, usually via song...Wakko Warner's songs about all the countries of the world for instance...or a song about Lake Titicaca...though that could be classed as getting stuff past the radar.

At that point my parents started watching these cartoons. Not all the cartoons, and not regularly. But they would pay attention to them more than before. My father liked Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and the Tick. My mother liked Batman and Superman...and somewhat liked Spiderman. I don't think she cared for the show, but Peter Parker's sarcasm amused her)

Can't both of these complaints apply to anime (the love/hate of loli in particular) and the perception of anime fans from other people, especially on the Internet? In that regard, I don't see why you can't understand the popularity, particularly from online communities like 4Chan.

And yes, I do know that most anime with loli fansevice is targeted at adult otaku, but it's still a viable comaprison imo.

I was talking about spreading the love/hate through fans-only (which is the case for MLP), not through the show itself. Yes, animes with lolis are similar in this matter (Lucky Star comes to mind, coupled with the hate for Haruhi commercials included), but I have yet to see fans calling themselves lolibros or trying to promote their shows this hard. Usually, they're too shy to even mention it outside of anime boards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

You must not remember the hype these shows got especially Haruhi! And a lot of fans of series have names for themselves. That is definitely not something new.

And MLP being "everywhere" (which I hardly see) is also not new to a popular fandom.

I remember the ridiculous hype around Haruhi, especially with the second season. Was LS that much anticipated? All I remember is "Haruhi everywhere, LS is a marketing machine!" and "Food episode sucked, won't watch!". One being a few silly cameos, the other a great way to discourage people, who don't like that kind of laid-back atmosphere, from watching the series.

I was talking about spreading the love/hate through fans-only (which is the case for MLP), not through the show itself. Yes, animes with lolis are similar in this matter (Lucky Star comes to mind, coupled with the hate for Haruhi commercials included), but I have yet to see fans calling themselves lolibros or trying to promote their shows this hard. Usually, they're too shy to even mention it outside of anime boards.

You must not remember the hype these shows got especially Haruhi! And a lot of fans of series have names for themselves. That is definitely not something new.

And MLP being "everywhere" (which I hardly see) is also not new to a popular fandom.

Teens saying they don't like a kids' show? Yeah, they live and breath, too, kinda to be expected.

Anyways, I had never heard of this phenomenon prior to opening this thread. I just watched episode one, it's not bad at all. I would put this in the category of: definitely aimed at kids, but well-made to the point of being watchable outside of that demographic. I'm more interested in the subject of that article that spawned this whole meme.

And I must say, I think when it comes to 4chan memes the quality of the content is irrelevant. For instance, all of them used to watch those Boxxy youtube videos incessantly which were about as entertaining as getting a root canal. So while I think this is not bad at all for a kids show, I think the meme is more based on them all hiveminding onto whatever random thing like they usually do.

I'm a big fan of MLP myself. I've seen a lot of people say "I watched a few episodes, but couldn't get into the show." But the appeal of the show is largely in the fanworks, and fan interpretations of the setting+characters. Some of the most popular characters are the background characters, since they're a blank slate for fanon personalitys and backstories. Like Derpy, a character with barely any speaking lines in this fan animation of the Cardcaptor Sakura OP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWG0KLSJi8g

Equestria is actually a really interesting, unique setting. It's a matriarchal society, and a utopia. It's also transhumanist; the ponies talk about how they biologically engineer the ecosystem, and the one remaining spot of true wilderness (the "Everfree" Forest) is feared.

Also, brocko joked about it, but I and many others are totally moe for ponies. I wish Twilight Sparkle was real. And who wouldn't find Fluttershy adorable? Considering it has an all-female cast like Touhou, it's also prime material for yuri shipping. There's just something addicting about that candy-colored innocent world of eternal frolicking and friendship lessons.